The Barbie doll is an icon filled with meanings; this thesis discusses the Barbie doll and herfeministic potentials and subject positions using a discourse analysis. The thesis analyzeswhat sort of femininity Barbie portraits in magazines, web series and films about her.Theories being used originate mainly from gender and queer studies, where the focus is on theperformative constructions of gender and femininity. Since the material mostly consists ofmoving images some influence is taken from feminist film theorists and semiotic theory,which focuses on signs and their meaning. The thesis centres around the questions: how isBarbie?s femininity challenged, strengthened and constructed in different types of mediaabout her produced by Mattel? And is there any feminist potential in Barbie?s subjectpositions in these media forms?.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the ways in which the constructions of heterosexuality and gender in three Disney movies about princesses affect the power relations between men and women in the movies, and how discourses on gender and heterosexuality have changed over time. Research questions were:How do characters in the movies talk about gender and heterosexuality?How does the interplay between gender and heterosexuality affect the power relations between men and women in the movies?What are the likenesses and differences between movies from different time periods?Discourses were mapped out using a model based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe?s political theories. These discourses were then analyzed with a theoretical framework consisting of Yvonne Hirdman?s concept of gender system and gender contracts, Judith Butler?s view on the heterosexual matrix and an understanding of power relations based on Michel Foucault.

The estimated number of people living in extreme poverty is 1.3 billion and 70% of those are women. The aim of this study is to explain in what ways and why women are regarded as poorer than men.The definition of poverty has expanded and is now multidimensional. In order to answer the aim of this thesis the following dimensions will be included and work as a theory in which the analysis will be structured after. Through a gender perspective, will the role of woman emerge through a multidimensional definition of poverty. If the balance is a negative in these dimensions, the situation for women will worsen and become permanent.

ABSTRACTPurpose/Aim: This essay aims to investigate what picture (obvious and hidden) of men and womens equality in our society that is to be found on DN Debatt.Material/Method: The material consists of 175 articles from DN Debatt during 2004. A content analysis and a rethoric analysis has then been used as a method of analysing the material.Main results: Men are much more represented on DN Debatt then women. The underlying picture of men and women that is presented sees men as being the ones who are in charge of all the important and ?big? decisions and questions in our society. Women on the other hand are pictured as, although they have reached higher positions in society, the ones who to a high degree focus on closer and more socially important issues.

This essay examines the Alberte triology, by the Norwegian writer Cora Sandel, from a gender/feminist perspective. Taking Yvonne Hirdman's theory about the gender system as a starting point I will show how the living conditions and the different roles of men and women are represented in the novel and how they are changing during the centuries before and after the First World War.I am particularly interested in Alberte, the main character, what attitude she takes to her position in the gender system and in what way she differs from the traditional female model. Is she a New Woman, a different ?species?, who doesn't fit into the rigid gender system? Does the New Woman have a male counterpart, and is he to be found in the novel? Does the novel give a positive vision of a future where men and women can meet as equals?.

Gender equality and gender equality work is relevant for today's working life, and previously male-dominated occupations may be increasingly under pressure to become more equal. This paper aims to explore and understand how the firefighters at a station are experiencing gender and gender equality in rescue services.Using theories of how sex is done, how a power perspective and a structural approach can show men's and women's different conditions in an organization, and theories that are more specific to gender and change management the firefighters talk about gender and gender equality are analyzed. Essay results were collected through interviews with seven firefighters and then analyzed and interpreted with the help of theories.The analysis shows that there is a perception among the firefighters that men and women are biologically different and that required physical strength legitimizes the exclusion of women. Inequality is seen as something natural and by pursuing an active gender equality women are given unwarranted benefits. When physical strength becomes a legitimate reason for exclusion, the responsibility for gender inequality is put on women and that women don?t have what it takes.There is also a resistance against gender equality analyzed in the paper, and it's stated opposition seems to be directed against the management's way of recruiting women.

This master?s thesis looks at discourses that use the pronoun ?hen?. The media debate in Sweden over this pronoun in 2012 started in connection with the publishing of a children?s picture book: Kivi och monsterhund, by Jesper Lundqvist and Bettina Jansson. The essay investigates how eight librarians, who take an interest in and work with gender issues, talk about the pronoun hen and about this picture book and other books that have characters which are not named as a sex/gender.The essay takes a discursive perspective on reality and on the construction of knowledge and carries out a discourse analysis of the librarians? talk in the qualitative interviews that were made for this study.

During the last decade executive coaching has become an increasingly popular method of management development. Few studies have been conducted within this area, especially in Sweden, and little has been said about the construction of management in executive coaching. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study executive coaching from a social constructionist perspective, focusing on the construction of management. The two research questions are: How is management constructed in executive coaching? How can we understand the construction of management in executive coaching? Additionally, we identify gender as a social construction of importance and thus include a gender perspective in our analysis.

In this thesis we present a qualitative study of Employer Branding through a perspective of gender. We examine the awareness of Employer Branding as a tool to break gender patterns in female and male dominated administrations in three Swedish municipalities. Six recruiters people were interviewed, including three pre-school managers and three managers of technical administrations, to see if there are any differences or similarities between the organizations? Employer Branding to break gender patterns. In addition to the interviews, the Web pages of these three municipalities were investigated through a contextual perspective.We found that our interviewees do use Employer Branding, but that they were not necessarily aware of its? meaning.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare how womanliness and manliness reveal themselves in different children?s books, mainly focusing on the concept of gender, in both text and images aspects. The questions I have chosen to interrogate are the following:How is the male and female role represented in children's books from a gender perspective, in both images and texts? What gender is generally the main character in children's books? What clothes are the characters wearing in children's books? What kind of occupations do the characters practice in children's books? What kind of qualities or attributes do the characters possess in children's books?When it comes to the selection of the method, I have chosen the use a qualitative method, where I use both a text and image analysis. The essay is based on Hirdman's and Hardning's gender theories and alsow on Nikolajeva's theorie about male and female.

The aim of this study was to shed light on how journalists describe the child?s world and what gender labels are used in their descriptions. We wanted to get a better understanding of what happens when gender is constructed.In order to study how gender is constructed, we chose to examine how the children?s magazine Kamratposten describes children?s spare time. We chose Kamratposten because it turns to both girls and boys.

The aim of this study was from the beginning to examine why a woman who has made an abortion comes back for another one. Why does the risk taking continue, despite the fact that abortion is perceived as emotionally hard? How can this be understood? This study consists of a literature review and semi-structured interviews. I wanted to interview women who had made a decision to have a repeated abortion, but it was difficult to get that kind of interviews. I then decided to interview the staff who meets women searching for an abortion to have their attitudes and experiences of women coming back for another abortion.

The aim of this essay is to analyze six picture books from a gender perspective. Research and investigations shows that children's literature has a big influence on how young children understand norms and values related to gender identity. It is written in the Swedish curriculum for the non-compulsory school system that the pre-school should counteract traditional gender roles.In this essay, six picture books with stories that take place in a pre-school or a pre-school class are being analyzed. Two of them, according to their market strategy, challenges established gender norms. I have investigated if there are any differences between how the educator as a character and the pre-school are portrayed where a girl contra a boy has the leading role.

This essay focuses on the implementation of the strategy gender mainstreaming in the European Union and the member states. It starts to identify problems connected to the implementation process and recognizes significant prerequisites for an efficient implementation of the strategy. The main problems and prerequisites are: political will, governance and structure and knowledge about gender equality. The empirical material consists of reports from the EU that touches upon gender mainstreaming and gender equality. The problems and prerequisites will be analysed in relation to the governance perspectives top-down and bottom-up and expert bureaucratic and participative democratic and gender and feminism.

The aim of this study is to from a gender perspective to examine whether spa is a place for both genders or it is focused on female spa visitors only. Also to study the organisation`s point of view of gender performances within spa tourism as well as to see spa organizations views on gender distribution.To be able to answer the questions, the qualitative method was used in our research. The method is relevant to our study since we sought to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. During the data collection we have used previous researchs and qualitative interviews. Overall we had conducted four interviews, one of which was the personal interview, two were made by email and one by phone call.